1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an online tool for providing knowledge and access to knowledge resources to users. Further, the present invention relates to an online tool for: 1) linking members of communities with mentors and subject matter experts that can help the member derive value from their online experience; 2) assessing and delivering online knowledge at a participant level; 3) pushing knowledge resources to participants based on the participant profile; 4) creating and updating an online personal growth plan; and 5) tracking value by participant or by community, as required by community leadership.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Towns, cities and counties are pushing towards providing internet connectivity for all of their residents. This is aimed at creating awareness in the communities about technologies available. This will help to open the small communities so its residents can interact with the outside world to gain knowledge and expertise about fields unknown to them. However, by providing internet connectivity and computer access without the right tools, this goal will not be fulfilled.
Therefore, what is needed is a tool that will benefit citizens of communities particularly those economically disadvantaged citizens. Targeted citizens can be at risk students, elementary school students, middle school students, high school students, college students, retired persons, persons desiring to re-tool their career, persons without jobs, and small business entrepreneurs.
Communities may consist of counties, cities or towns. Other communities may be a formal or informal group of persons aligned to take advantage of the tool in the claim. This tool should provide mentoring capabilities to the residents so that the residents can connect with people both within their own communities and in different cities and regions to learn from their experiences and derive benefits from their knowledge in specific areas of interest. This tool should also have features that allow the residents to receive information based on their interest areas and collaborate with other users in order to gain knowledge. Further, this tool should have the ability to allow online educational content to be delivered to the residents based on their areas of interest.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20060031087 titled “Mentor-ProtégéMatching System and Method” by Fox et. al. describes one such tool. This application describes a method and a system for matching a protégé with a mentor on the basis of profiles of the protégé and the mentors. The system of this patent application provides training materials and tutorials for its participants based on the profile of the participants. Participants also receive the customized and coaching curricula via email. This system is specifically developed for use by early college students to find seniors, graduate students and working professionals as mentors.
Another such tool is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,438,580 titled “System and a Method for an Interactive Knowledgebase” by Mears et. al. This patent describes an interactive knowledgebase that stores information in multiple categories. The information is searchable by users of the system. The knowledgebase also stores a discussion group for each category. Each category also has a user that serves as an expert for that category. This user posts replies to questions in the discussion group. Hence, users can interact with an expert through a forum. The users must manually find a forum that contains discussions on their areas of interest and then initiate a conversation with the subject matter expert.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20040219493 titled “Interactive Learning and Career Management System” by Phillips describes a system for providing information to a user by searching for information from multiple sources. A profile for each user is created, and based on the profile, searches for information on each user are carried out automatically. These results are then pushed out to the user.
Although the above listed documents mention systems and methods that individually provide a part of the tools required for solving the problem as discussed, there is no technology that combines the tools listed above and others to provide a complete tool for the described problem. Hence, there is a need for a tool that will not only match users with mentors and subject matter experts so that the users can derive knowledge on their areas of interest from interactions with the mentors and the subject matter experts, but also assess and push Internet based information and educational content to users so that the users can develop knowledge and skills necessary for their areas of interest. This tool should have the necessary technology to allow the users to collaborate with the mentors and subject matter experts and other users via online messaging, voice conferencing, video conference and remote application sharing.